Alas, if only the world of digitized music on the Internet were really that simple.

Last week, my column on sites that stream, or attempt to sound like, actual broadcast radio stations (Tuning into Internet Radio), triggered many comments from readers. I was reprimanded for ignoring such real-world-come-to-the-Web favorites as KPIG, the self-described "format-defying blend of adult rock, acoustic music, blues, progressive country, Hawaiian, Cajun, bluegrass and folk" out of Freedom, Ca., and San Francisco's eclectic college station KUSF.

When you start bookmarking all the sites and adding all the necessary players to your desktop, you begin to see that one, two, three quickly becomes eight, nine, 10 ... 30, 40, 50.

But that's the glory of the World Wide Web, right? The freedom to choose, the freedom to use.

That brings us to the big sites -- NetRadio, Imagine Radio, SonicNet, Spinner.com, and Rolling Stone Radio, to name a few -- that hope to pull you in as a loyal listener-user by giving you more choices and more liberty in executing them.

Some of these megasites are trying to be all things to all people, hoping to entice you into bookmarking and clicking their urls the way you program and push the preset buttons on your car radio. They don't operate like those grand old soda shop Wurlitzers (you don't stroll up, drop in a quarter, and pick the song you want to hear next), but they are like expanded jukeboxes, with multiple channels -- sometimes more than 100. Find the genres that fit your individual taste and let 'em stream. Most allow you to preset your favorites, and some give you the option of configuring your own personal station.

Unfortunately, most of these sites also test your patience, with annoying graphics and clunky frames, flashing advertisements and obtrusive links to partner e-commerce CD stores.

After enduring too much of the above, plus scores of messages telling me that I need another plug-in, that my scofflaw browser has committed another illegal operation, and that I have to wait through another seven seconds of buffering and net congestion, I've finally found my personal favorite multi-channel sites. (I couldn't get the sound to work at the new Global Music Network, which promises to "re-energize the classical music and jazz industries through providing unique multimedia programming over the Internet," and I couldn't test drive RealNetworks' new MP3-based RealJukebox, because it requires a 200MHz MMX processor, and I'm still in the dark ages of 1996).

As with everything else on the 'net, this could all change in the next 24 hours.

At first I was impressed by Imagine Radio, which allowed me to edit my artist preferences, influence the "weight" of the rotation, listen to someone else's station, and add their artists to my playlist.

Smaller and more focused than Imagine, Wired Planet touts itself as "the definitive source for independent music." It boasts some of the same features as Imagine, including customizable stations and adjustable rotations, but distinguishes itself with individual pages for all the artists featured on the site; a weekly magazine/interview show; a unique, fully integrated, streaming MP3 player; and a palpable commitment to truly alternative and experimental music on 12 stations programmed by people who obviously know and care about the music.

Wired Planet's stations have such names as "Alpha 2" (DownTempo and Trip-Hop), "Axis" (Jazz in its many forms), "Core" (Punk/Hardcore/Garage), and "Nova Mundi" (New Age/Ambient). The closest to anything mainstream might be found in "Pop3" (Songwriters and Storytellers).

Take Wired Planet's concentrated programming and multiply it by 10 and you get Spinner.com which, so far, has provided the most listening fun I've experienced on the web.

(One of Spinner's eight content managers, Michele Flannery, was the Music Director at KPFA in 1995 when I was brought on to host what is now the Hear & Now.) Imagine my personal glee at tuning into the Avant Garde channels and hearing, in succession, Sun Ra, Myra Melford with Han Bennink, John Zorn's Masada, Joey Baron, and Misha Mengelberg, or knowing that I might run into the Mekons on three or four different channels!

Like Wired Planet, Spinner (which was launched in 1996 as TheDJ.com) features music-streaming software (in this case based on the RealPlayer) that stands alone from your web browser, is easy and efficient to use, and provides excellent sound if you have an optimum set-up -- a Pentium processor, a fast connection, and good headphones or speakers with a subwoofer.

Apparently, I'm not the only one impressed with Spinner.com. According to PR spokesperson Dawn Holstein, 1.3 million unique users log on each month for an average of 90 to 120 minutes at a time. Those numbers support Senior Vice-President Scott Epstein's contention that "this is the year that streaming media is going to explode. It's probably the fastest growing category on the web right now," he says, "it's a land grab."

In staking out their turf, the Spinner folks did serious market research and made the conscious decision to avoid using radio as their model, deliberately keeping the word "radio" out of their name and off their site. "What we heard people saying," Epstein said, "was that they were generally frustrated with radio, that it gives them too little of what they want, too much of what they don't want, with too many annoying DJs, and too many interruptions. We're not trying to do radio better," he says, "we're inventing a new category of Internet music service."

Whether you call it Internet radio or not, the music streaming from the web (80 percent of it in Spinner's case) is mostly going into workplace computers, where T1 lines and headphones make listening worthwhile, and stressed-out white-collar workers have no other entertainment at hand. Whether it can reach a broader, home-based audience and supplant the traditional radio experience, which is often personality-driven and geographically specific, remains to be seen -- and heard. Our entire outlook might be only an upgrade away.